Behind-the-scenes peek at development of two Start Garden ideas ahead of Thursday Update Night

GRAND RAPIDS, MI — In a bright, fourth-floor office in the Windquest Building last month, a team of investors quietly munched on samples of dried spicy beef and chicken on a skewer. Heads nodded at their first taste of Suya, a traditional African roadside staple food.

The entrepreneur stood nearby, watching carefully for reaction.

Questions followed: How are you buying meat? What kind of price are you getting? How will it be packaged? What are the projected sales volumes?

“The packaging company is used to working with bigger operations and multimillion dollar accounts, so the challenge is getting them to believe in the product,” said Tonna Agim, as the Start Garden team brainstormed ways to help him introduce the packaged African food into the mainstream American market.

Since its unveiling on April 26, Start Garden, Rick DeVos’ $15 million venture capital fund, has invested a total of $130,000 in 26 ideas at $5,000 apiece, ranging in scope from an online coffee subscription service to a project attempting to crowdsource the design of an electric motorcycle.

The idea is to accelerate potential businesses from the back-of-the-napkin idea stage to a place where it can begin producing revenue, with an option for the fund to remain investors if the concept proves to be successful and profitable.

On Thursday, the first Update Night will take place at the Grand Rapids Public Museum, where seeded entrepreneurs will give a public report on their progress and a panel of judges will announce who, if any, qualifies for an additional $20,000 buy in. Investment up $500,000 is possible if an idea shows continual traction.

In the meantime, the Start Garden team has been busy meeting with their seeded entrepreneurs, getting to know them, their vision, drive and likelihood for success. At the $5,000 investment level, the meetings are mostly informal, said DeVos, and can often illuminate a snag in the development of an idea that Start Garden could potentially help smooth out somehow.

“We just want to check in to see how things are going, maybe more out of curiosity than anything else,” he said. “It’s not a highly structured engagement.”

The direction from Start Garden could involve anything from advice for the entrepreneur to a connection with one of West Michigan's largest companies. The same corporate giants behind the urban design hub GRid70 are backing Start Garden, recognizing the potential for partnering with startups that pose a strategic fit.

Start Garden's roster of business partners include Amway, Steelcase, Wolverine World Wide, Fifth Third Bank, Cascade Engineering and other regional companies that have committed to putting their time and talents into the projects funded by the organization.

At the Suya meeting, Agim got some direction about navigating the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture approval process for his product and input on a potential package redesign. Much more direction than that starts to run the risk of micro-management, said DeVos.

It’s the sink or swim mentality at work.

“It would be impossible if we’re trying to make decisions for 100 different investments,” said DeVos. “It also wouldn’t reveal how aggressive and ambitious people can be.”

Across downtown from the Windquest Building, a team of web developers above San Chez Tapas Bistro are working toward a second round of investment.

Eric Loehfelm, Joe Johnson and Christian Saylor of the tech firm Universal Mind got $5,000 from Start Garden in April to develop a smartphone application that takes single second video clips and stitches them together into a single, continuous “epic” video. The idea is called One Second Epic and they are hoping to land $150,000 from Start Garden in order to have the app ready for download by October.

The Epic team wants to take advantage of the advances in Internet and mobile network speeds in order capitalize on the growing slice of video sharing in social media. Imagine everyone at an event contributing tiny bits of video seamlessly stitched together into one final product.

“If it’s like a birthday gathering or a wedding, you could have this really cool aggregation of a 5-minute video taken from all these different perspectives and you can see the day in the life from different points of view, but all contextually relevant to one another,” said Loehfelm, showing an app prototype on his iPhone.

Garret Ellison | MLive.comKim Klap and Benjamin Gott (left) from Start Garden get a progress update from Eric Loehfelm and Joe Johnson (right) about their mobile app One Second Epic.

Start Garden’s Benjamin Gott, an entrepreneur behind Boxed Water, and Kim Klap, the team’s sales and marketing coordinator, were at the table for Loehfelm’s update.

“It’s bizarre how long a second can be,” said Gott, characterizing the idea as “Twitter for video” and noting the potential for emotional engagement with users.

But how to monetize such a thing? Johnson said the possibilities under consideration involve selling in-app purchases and partnering with sponsors on a component called “Epic Events,” where users upload video from something like a concert or the Olympics in order to create a shared event video.

The Epic team will be presenting at the Update Night this week. They are building the app to take advantage of the latest Apple mobile operating system, iOS 6, and have been strategizing the best schedule to launch in the Apple App Store. Contacting talent agencies in Los Angeles in order to get the app in the hands of celebrities would be valuable promotion.

However, they need additional investment in order to expedite the app development.

“We’re trying to pull every single lever we know so when it pops, it pops hard,” said Loehfelm.

The Update Night takes place Thursday, July 26 at the Grand Rapids Art Museum. The event begins at 5:30 p.m. Admission is $5. Doors open at 5 p.m.